The Siege of MeccaThe Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine
and the Birth of al Qaeda

Yaroslav Trofimov

Author: Yaroslav Trofimov

Doubleday, 2007

Trofimov has been a foreign correspondent
for the Wall Street Journal since 1999. What follows here
is a brief overview of a
book rich in scholarship and detail, and easy to read.

One of the leading characters in this book is Juhayman, whose
family was of Bedouin and Wahhabi heritage, his kin having
been with the Ikhwan fighters. He was forty-two in 1979,
the year of the siege at Mecca. He had served in the
Saudi National Guard, reaching the rank of corporal before
retiring in 1973. He had not forgiven King al Saud "for
the indignities that had been inflicted upon his
kin." Bedouins were a people who lived without advanced
technology or luxuries, and Juhayman saw corruption in
these. He believed that the Saud family had become
corrupted by things Western.
He was in tune with a teacher of his, the blind
cleric Bin Baz, who was opposed to hanging pictures, clapping
hands and any kind of emancipation for women, including
women as teachers for boys. Juhayman built a movement dedicated
to overthrowing Saud family power and establishing rule
that was true to Islam.

The turn of the century was coming,
the year 1400 according to the Islamic calendar, and it
was seen by Juhayman as having a supernatural significance.
Juhayman and friends saw a number of divine signs and
believed that with the new century would appear the prophesied
redeemer of Islam: the Mahdi. Juhayman found recruits among
those younger than he, including his young brother-in-law,
Abdullah. Juhayman,
and perhaps a few others, tried to convince Abdullah that
he was the Mahdi. Abdullah was skeptical for a while, but
with an adequate application of religiosity
he was won over.

Recognizing the hostility of Juhayman's group to the royal
family, Saudi authorities
moved against them, imprisoning some and sending Juhayman
into hiding. The cleric Bin Baz had influence in
government circles and recommended that the detainees be
released, and they were. Juhayman had co-conspirators who
had studied at the Grand Mosque academy and "knew
every nook and cranny of the compound." The day before
the first day of the new century the conspirators parked
three pickup trucks in the compound's basement – the trucks
filled with an abundance of weapons, ammunition and food.
Early the next morning the conspirators,
"hundreds" in number, were at the Grand Mosque among the
more than 100,000 pilgrims from around
the world. Juhayman's men closed all gates to the mosque,
fired their weapons into the air and announced
what they were doing. The pilgrims were now prisoners.
One by one, with weapons in hand, the conspirators knelt
down, kissed the supposed Mahdi's hand and offered an oath.
Some pilgrims joined in.

Ikhwan (brethren), perhaps in the
1920s.

The Grand Mosque, the Kaaba central,
untouched by the rebels

Before the day was over, Saudi police arrived
and were shot and killed. The conspirators had restricted
themselves to shooting at uniformed agents of
the government. They were skilled marksmen, with weapons
that had good range, and they occupied the top levels of
the mosque's minarets.

The
government was stunned and slow in understanding what was
happening. They tried to seal off news of the event to
the outside world, but some Americans managed to notify
the Carter administration in Washington.
Washington played on fears of
its enemy, Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, which
was holding hostages at the U.S. embassy. An assumption
was made that the rebels at the Grand Mosque were Shia
spreading Khomeini's revolution. This was passed to
the media, an article in the New York Times quoting an
American official who described the militants in Mecca
as likely to be responding to Khomeini's call for an "uprising
by fundamentalist Muslims." President
Carter decided that he had to act, and he ordered a battle
group from Subic Bay in the Philippines including the
carrier Kitty
Hawk
to the Persian Gulf to enhance Saudi
Arabia's sense of security.

Learning that news of the Grand Mosque takeover had been
leaked, the Saudis were outraged. Iran's
foreign ministry was also outraged at what he saw as
an accusation from Washington. A message from the Ayatollah
Khomeini was broadcast over Iranian radio accusing the
U.S. and Israel of being those who were orchestrating the
despicable horrors in Mecca.

In days that followed, people across the Muslim world responded
to Khomeini's description of the events at Mecca, without
a clear and adamant denial from Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Turkey, Libya, Kuwait, and among Muslims in
India, places identified as American were targeted – embassies,
consulates, U.S. information and culture centers, a Bank
of America branch, an American Express office and Pan Am
offices. In Hyderabad, India, where there were no visible
American targets, Muslims turned against their Hindu merchants
who had not shuttered their stores as had Muslim merchants.
The violence continued for days, until security forces
there overwhelmed the rioters, making more than a thousand
arrests.

General Zia, ruler of Pakistan

At the U.S. embassy in Pakistan a crowd chanted "Death
to American dogs" and broke into the compound, while
Marine guards were not allowed to fire their weapons. Demonstrators
firing weapons killed one
Marine and a U.S. Army warrant officer. Embassy
personnel, 137 of them, huddled inside the embassy vault,
nearly overcome by the heat and suffocation while the embassy
burned, and they waited for help from Pakistani police,
which did not come. Pakistan's dictator, General Zia, was
playing to the crowd, reluctant to alienate his fellow
Muslims. While the lives of embassy personnel hung in the
balance, he promised to make Pakistan "an
impregnable fortress of Islam," proclaiming "the
situation" at
the Grand Mosque "extremely sad" and proclaiming
that "Muslims must
pray to God Almighty to bestow His blessing and mercy on
the Muslim World." No help to U.S. Embassy personnel
came from Pakistani police. Now free to defend themselves
with firearms, those huddled in the embassy vault fired
back against those at the vault hatch on the embassy's
roof. Night came and the embassy attackers went away. The
Carter administration was misinformed, believing that Zia
had immediately dispatched troops to the embassy.
President Carter and Secretary of State Vance praised Zia
and his troops for their stellar behavior, leaving those
who had suffered through the attack on the embassy livid
with anger against Carter.

Osama bin Laden in one of
his sweeter moods

Secretary Vance moved to evacuate his diplomatic
corps from the Muslim world – except in Saudi Arabia -
to forestall other hostage situations from developing.
U.S. embassies became hollow shells. Trofimov writes that
Muslim radicals noticed that when hit hard, as Osama bin
Laden would say, America retreats.

Meanwhile, when the crisis at Mecca broke out, Pope John
Paul II was visiting Turkey. A young Muslim
radical, Mehmet ali Ogca, managed to escape from a Turkish
prison, describing his reason for doing so the
siege at Mecca. He described the Pope's visit as part of
the infidel plot at Mecca and the Pope as masquerading
as a man of faith. He warned that "the
crusaders" would pay for their misdeeds. It was
Agca who would shoot and wound the Pope, in 1981.

At the Grand Mosque, Saudi troops were attacking
with armored personnel carriers and fifty caliber machine
guns and more heavy weaponry. Snipers were blasted out
of the nests high in the minarets. The Mosque's ground
level was cleared of rebels. The fighting continued in
the vast basement area, which Saudi troops penetrated
with armored vehicles. The floor was slippery
from blood and human entrails. Pilgrims remained trapped,
with Saudi troops
firing at anything that moved.

Mohammed
Abdullah, the supposed Mahdi, was at the forefront of the
fighting, apparently believing that he was more than mortal
and impervious to bullets. He picked up the flash-bang
hand grenades tossed his way and tossed them back. All
one throwing the grenades had to do was count off a couple
of seconds after pulling the grenade pin and then throw
the grenade. The grenade would go off before Abdullah
could throw it back, which is what happened, leaving him
bleeding and out of action on the floor. Under barrages
of fire, Juhayman's men were unable to rescue their Mahdi, "who
writhed in agony amid the toxic haze."
Juhayman was asked by his men whether Abdullah's death
meant that their venture was a mistake. Juhayman
asked in return how anyone could question God's command
and what proof anyone had that Abdullah was dead. The battle
for justice on Earth, he shouted, must go on. He said that
he would stay and fight if he were the only one who remained.
Swayed by his ardor, writes Trofimov, his men stayed.

Saudi authority decided that their troops
were too slow in defeating the rebels and that Saudi family
rule was indeed threatened. Reluctant to seek help from the
U.S., the Saudis approached the French, who sent three
men from their secret force, the Groupe
d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), to
train Saudi officers in efficient tactics.

A threat to the government existed also in an uprising from
November 25 to November 30 in Saudi Arabia's
eastern oil producing region along the Persian Gulf. The
rebels there were youths belonging to the country's Shiite
minority, moved by rumors about the events in Mecca. The
Saudi government blacked out all news of the uprising
in the eastern region. Blood flowed there, the Saudi
National Guard using armored personnel carriers, machine
guns, helicopter gunships and artillery. The uprising
ended with the rioting youths dispersed
and in shock and an older generation of Shiite leaders
successfully suing for peace.

Fighting in the basement of the Grand Mosque lasted to December
4. It was on that day, at a National Security Council (NSC)
meeting that President Carter accepted the idea put
forth by his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
that demonstrations of weakness could be disastrous,
that it was necessary to demonstrate strength. It was the
beginning of what would be called the Carter Doctrine,
intended to demonstrate U.S. strength and commitment to
the defense of countries in the Persian Gulf region that
were of "vital
interest" to the United States.

The last
of the rebels in the basement of the Grand Mosque, including
Juhayman, were taken prisoner on December 5. A few days
later, U.S. negotiators flew to Oman to discuss establishing
a military base.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union's military,
led by defense minister Dmitri Ustinov, decided that if
Carter could deploy the carrier Kitty
Hawk and task force to the Gulf area, tens of thousands
of kilometers from U.S. territory, the
Soviet Union should be free to defend its
positions in neighboring Afghanistan. On December 10,
the Soviet military began to assemble a force
of 75,000 to 80,000 along the Afghan-Soviet border. It
would be on December 24 that Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.
The Carter Doctrine would now morph
into a defense of the Persian Gulf area from Soviet domination.
Trofimov quotes from Carter's State of the Union speech,
delivered in January:

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any
outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region
will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of
the United States of America, and such an assault will be
repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

For years, Saudi Arabia had been speaking of the threat to
it by Communism – in addition to the republicanism that
had been espoused by Egypt's Nasser. Now, assessing the
threat to Saudi Arabia from the extremists who had attacked
the Grand Mosque, it was recognized that had Juhayman and
his group attacked a vital target rather than a religious
symbol they might have succeeded in
their goal of overthrowing the monarchy. The Saudi
king, Khaled, is reported to have told foreign visitors
weeks after the battle that had Juhayman
"attacked my palace, he might have met
with more success." This was before the internet and
live satellite news was available for Juhayman's risings
to attract more activist support.

On January 9, 1980, Juhayman and 62 of his followers were
beheaded. The cleric Bin Baz and other radical clergy,
described by some as Wahhabi, had switched sides, favoring
Saudi authority. Bin Baz (Abd-al-Aziz ibn Abd-Allah ibn
Baaz) in 1992 would be appointed
Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Head of the Council
of Senior Scholars and president of the
administration for scientific research and legal rulings.

Juhayman's influence remained. One of the
pilgrims who had watched the takeover in Mecca had taken
a Juhayman leaflet home with him to Egypt. Trofimov
describes him as sharing it and exciting tales of the Mecca
events with his brother Khaled, a first lieutenant in the
Egyptian army, who began an eighteen month "path to martyrdom."
It would be this brother, in 1981, who would fire several
bullets into the "pharaoh" Anwar Sadat, Egypt's
president, for betraying Islam and making peace with the
Jews.

One of those who had a "personal bond" with Juhayman's
movement was a Palestinian preacher, Isam al Barqawi, alias
Abut Mohammed al Maqdisi. He wrote that Juhayman had been
wrong about the Mahdi but that this was "nothing
compared to the enormous crimes of the Saudi government." He
argued that by sending soldiers against Juhayman, the Saudi
state was the first to violate Koranic prohibitions against
waging warfare in "the holy precinct." Trofimov
writes that one of those influenced by Maqdisi was the
person who planted the bomb, in November 1995, that destroyed
the National Guard building in Riyadh, killing seven people,
including five Americans. Maqdisi
at this time was behind bars in Jordan. His cell mate "a
co-conspirator and favored pupil" was Abu Musab al Zarqawi,
the future leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Trofimov writes that Osama
bin Laden, a Saudi citizen and 23 at the time of the siege
at Mecca, could not help but
feel sympathy for Juhayman and his cause. In the mid-1980s
according to an associate, bin Laden in a private conversation
said that "the
men who seized the Mosque were true Muslims." Trofimov
writes that after the massive deployment of U.S. troops
in Saudi Arabia in 1990-91, bin Laden "started to repeat
almost word for word Juhayman's repudiations of the [Saudi]
royal family. Bin Laden railed against non-Muslims on
Saudi soil, against banks violating Islamic prohibitions
on usury, and against "the royal family's dalliance with
Christian powers." And in 2004, on tape, bin Laden praised
Juhayman and faulted the Saudi regime for having defiled
the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.